MORE than a hundred staff and students from South Croydon's Whitgift School performed at its annual autumn concert last Thursday at Fairfield Halls.
The students from junior to senior years performed a series of mainly classical pieces to a packed audience of parents and staff.
The evening saw the premiere of Whitgift teacher Rosanna Whitfield's work for orchestra and choir, The Gift.
Some 80 boys of the Whitgift First Form Choir and the Elmhurst Senior Choir sung the uplifting piece, accompanied by the Whitgift Symphony Orchestra.
A suite from Heart of Darkness, a one-act chamber opera, started the second half of the show, with its libretto narrated by former Whitgift pupil Pip Burley.
His fellow Old Whitgiftian Tarik O'Regan wrote the opera, which is based on the 1899 Joseph Conrad novella of the same name. Mr O'Regan wrote the suite especially for the school.
The Whitgift Corps of Drums and solo violinist Sean Dunn were among the evening's other impressive performers.
The students had performed earlier in the day, also at Fairfield Halls, for more than 1,300 local primary school children.
